


Team Building

by LadySilver



Series: Upended [8]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, au bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-31 23:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coach Finstock gets called to a new level.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team Building

Coach Finstock assumed the first voice mail message was a practical joke of some sort and deleted it. If he punched the delete key a little harder than necessary, it was only becausehe didn't have the time or patience for this kind of idiocy. He was a coach, true enough, and he liked to think of himself as a great coach. But he coached a developmental ice hockey team in the backwoods of northern California. He couldn't think of a single reason why anyone would legitimately want him coaching the USA Olympic team. Yeah, he had a couple of good players. OK, outstanding players. Miraculously, amazing outstanding players—even if they were prone to fighting. But, it was ice hockey: Fights on the ice were expected. There was a reason fans chanted about being at a boxing match where the occasional hockey broke out.

He deleted the second voice mail a few days later for the same reasons, shaking his head all the while. As far as jokes went, it wasn't funny. Some people just didn't know when to stop.

The next afternoon a padded envelope landed on his desk, part of an otherwise generic mail delivery. He picked it up and shook it, certain that he hadn't ordered anything. The contents rattled. He frowned and shook the package again. When he finally opened it, he found a box of brand name dog biscuits. A small note was also enclosed, handwritten, but not addressed or signed, informing him that he should consider using the biscuits as a training tool. Box clutched in his hand, he threw open the office door and peered out into the locker room, knowing that whomever sent the box would be lurking out there, waiting to have a good laugh at him.

The clang of the metal door bouncing off the wall reverberated through the empty room.

His footsteps echoed off the cement floor as he walked through the space, confirming that no one hid behind or in the lockers, no one had left any further "gifts."

Really, he told himself, he should have expected a practical joke like this to have occurred eventually. Maybe the surprise was how long it took. He'd been coaching the Wolves for six years, and when he'd started with them they had been the laughing stock of the conference. Had someone grown jealous of their success? Or was it just a fan who thought he'd come up with a clever comment?

Finstock shook his head, dismissing the thoughts, and dropped the box into his garbage before continuing through the rest of the mail.

Two days later a letter arrived explaining in formal language on expensive paper that he had been selected as a candidate for Olympic coach based on his qualifications with his team and his ability to work with their unique abilities. He read the letter over several times, growing more confused with each passing. His qualifications? What qualifications? His team had won the Division championship this last season, to be sure, but they'd lost the State tournament after all the starters got ill at the same time.

He crumpled the letter up and tossed it in the garbage as well. Someone had clearly made a mistake. Finstock was hardly a common name, but there had to be another one whom the committee clearly intended to tap. Considering how many developmental teams there were, and how many divisions across the country, if winning the Division was all it took to demonstrate competence to coach the Olympic team, then someone had a really wrong idea about what the Olympics were supposed to be achieving. He had too much respect for that level to give the offer any serious thought.

Another padded envelope arrived later that week. This one contained a small box with a whistle inside. And another handwritten note that suggested he trade in his old whistle. The whistle's metal shone in the flourescent lights from overhead, all shiny and new. He put it in his mouth and blew, curious as to what made this one so special. He heard nothing. From out in the locker room came a shrill yelp and the crash of a body slamming into lockers. Finstock ran the sequence of sounds back through his head. Yes, it had definitely happened in that order. Before he could go out to investigate, the phone rang. He stared at it, listening to the second ring and then the third. Just before the fourth, when the phone would click over to voice mail, he picked up the receiver.

"Finstock," he announced.

"Robert Finstock from Beacon Hills?" the voice on the other end inquired. A male voice, speaking the words with a precision of articulation that Finstock didn't often hear.

"Bobby," he corrected, automatically. He'd never been Robert; he wasn't even sure why his parents had burdened him with the formal name since, to the best of his recollection, they'd never used it. Even when they were angry, in those situations where other kids got their full names trotted out, he was still just Bobby.

A soft sigh came down the phone line, one that carried a relieved smile. "I'm delighted to have finally caught you," the voice replied. "I presume you have received our letter and coaching aids...?"

"Yeah," Finstock answered, tone heavy with suspicion. He set the whistle down on his desk and eyed it. What was the point of a whistle that didn't work?

"And I further presume that you have some concerns about the veracity of the offer." This time the speaker didn't frame a question.

"Look, if this is some sort of joke-" Finstock began, ready to get his ire up. He wasn't yet there. A part of him wanted to believe what the letter had to say. Coaching the Olympic team? What a dream come true that would be! Up until that first phone call, it was a dream so distant that he didn't even know he had it. He'd always told himself that he has happy working with the developmental league.

"I assure you, this is no joke," the voice interrupted. "If you'll allow me to explain..." And he did. There were words used like discrimination and minority rights and rebalance. There were words that weren't used, but ones Finstock heard anyway, like retribution and guilty parties. The speaker claimed that he represented a sort of Political Action Committee who wanted to see some changes to public perception, and they had targeted athletics as one avenue toward this goal.

Finstock pulled the phone away from his ear during the spiel and stared at the receiver. Was he really expected to believe all this? He started to hang the phone up, then tsked to himself. What was the harm in listening?

Finally a break came, a lull in the monologue where he was clearly supposed to say something. He pursed his lips, shuffled some papers around on his desk, searching for inspiration. "I'm not certified," he pointed out.

"Leave it to us to navigate the hoops," the speaker responded. He had apparently expected that argument. There was a pause, then a large exhalation across the phone line. "The truth is, we're really interested in several of your players..."

Finstock started to ask which ones, but cut himself off as he realized exactly whom the speaker referenced. After a big turnover on the team two years back, Finstock had resigned himself to needing to rebuild, his overall expectations pinned on Jackson and Danny. They were great players, but not enough to carry a whole team. Then Scott had blossomed practically overnight, had gone from dead weight that Coach kept around to maintain numbers to the best winger he'd ever worked with. Shortly after that, a similar transformation happened to Isaac. Then, as if the water was laced, Jackson and Danny shot to a new level with their skills. All of them had agility and reflexes that professional players could only fantasize about.

If Finstock hadn't known better, he would have sworn that the boys were all on steroids, though he had never seen steroids work that quickly, to that extreme, or without leaving any trace in the system. He couldn't have begged, borrowed, or stolen a better first line. The only issue was that none of the boys had any anger management skills, and they all seemed to have an intense, constant rivalry with each other. He'd had to learn quickly how to control them, redirect them, focus them. It took a few practices, but he'd started to figure it out.

"And you want me because..." He left the question open. He'd always hoped that one of the players he coached would someday get tapped to play on the Olympic team; he'd never imagined that four of them would be, especially while he was still coaching them.

"You have a rare gift," the speaker replied. "Most people of your first line's … persuasion … wouldn't respond to a mere human. We believe you have a lot of potential."

Pursing his lips, Finstock considered what he was being told, and struggled to fill in the blanks. He had always prided himself on his observational ability-a decent coach had to build on the strengths of the players in front of him, which meant identifying them correctly, even if those strengths were still latent-but he'd obviously been missing some important details. He glanced at the garbage can next to his desk. It was empty, but he remembered the box that had crinkled the plastic lining days before. Then he picked up the silent whistle and turned it over in his hand. His assumptions about who his players were and what they were capable of crumpled under the weight of the new ideas formulating in his head.

"So … the Olympics?" he asked, just to make sure he'd heard correctly. Nothing like starting big. He could appreciate cohones like that. If he'd figured out what he thought he'd figured out, that would be the beginning of the adventure, not the end. The wall next to his desk was cinderblock, painted an eggshell color. He had a couple of certificates and plaques mounted on it from the previous wins he'd helped the team to, but rather than seeing them with the wall in the background, he suddenly saw the wall as the vast expanse of emptiness it was, broken only by the handful of awards. He wouldn't mind filling that space up, wouldn't object at all to seeing that eggshell paint disappear under photographs and trophies. And, if he was helping someone else toward a greater good, so much the better.

"I thought you'd see things our way with enough persuasion," the voice spoke. "We'll be sending over a new assistant for you: my nephew. He can answer any of your questions."

The call came to an end and Finstock hung up the phone. He pulled the old whistle off the faded lanyard he'd had it strung on and replaced it with the new one, already mentally making the adjustment from one lucky whistle to another. The dog biscuits? Certainly he could get a supply of those from the grocery store; if not the regular one, then maybe that upscale market on the other side of town. He glanced at the calendar on his desk just to verify that this was a good part of the month to introduce some new training methods. He already had several ideas hatching.

He wasn't at all sure about what he'd just agreed to, but Bobby Finstock had never been one to reject a challenge. And if coaching the Olympic team was what he was destined to do, then he'd make sure that the players he was bringing with him were ready to be unleashed.

**Author's Note:**

> Fulfills AU Bingo square #17: Olympics


End file.
